Child Poverty: Why Youth Must Lead

Teach every child to raise his voice
And then, my brothers, then
Will justice be demanded
By ten million righteous men.
Make them hear you.
When they hear you,
I'll be near you
Again.

 

 

Two headlines from today.  If you commit just a bit of sociology, you might even sense a connection between them:

 

“If ever there was a wakeup call, this would be it,” the mayor-elect says of a report showing city has highest child-poverty rate among Canadian cities.

 

Crippling child poverty.  That's a whole generation growing up in tense climates, without proper nutrition, without proper supports.  But clearly, this is someone else's problem, right?  Those parents should be doing more, working harder, hustling for cash, or something.  It's their own fault, right?  Nothing to do with us.

 

So long as governments keep taxes low and especially provide tax breaks to businesses, that'll create jobs - then people just need to hustle to get them and everything else will be fine.

 

On to story number two:

 

Some 73 students were suspended or expelled for bringing weapons to school over the past school year, up from 42 the previous year.

 

Guns.  In our schools.  What's behind this?  Are backwoods bigots from Pakistan invading our schools and using their mind control powers to make our kids bring weapons to class instead of pens? Is this a reflection of the erosion of Canadian values, or the Americanization of our culture?

 

Here's an idea:

 

Chris Penrose, executive director of Success Beyond Limits, a youth outreach program in the Jane St. and Finch Ave. area, said he is concerned about violence among teens. But he said the weapons spike likely has to do with larger community issues, including poverty, education gaps and youth unemployment.

 

There is plenty of money in Canada right now; there are 118,000 millionaires in Toronto alone.  There are plenty of services - public, not-for-profit, corporate social responsibility - that exist, offering an alphabet soup of services.

 

And of course, there's the prevailing wisdom of our laissez-faire model of capitalism; in Canada, it doesn't matter where you come from, what hurdles are in your way, if you push hard enough you too can be one of the 118,000.  You gotta work hard, be willing to start simple, but above all you gotta hustle.

 

The implication, of course, is that if you don't succeed, it's your own damned fault.

 

Here's a term that will be familiar to pretty much anyone in town with responsibility for managing finances - ROI, Return On Investment.  If you can't see a clear, short-term return on whatever your investment might be, you don't do it.  Low-hanging fruit are therefore preferable; the least effort required for decent gains in short time frames.

 

Let's reframe that a little bit so that we're all on the same page:

 

- If you don't have resources - if you're poor, young, accessibility-challenged, whatever, the pressure is on for you to hustle hard over the long-run if you want to get anywhere in life.

 

- on the other hand, if you've had some success in life, long-term investments aren't worth your time; it's all about the quick-wins, the best bang for your buck, the low-hanging fruit.

 

For the haves, it all makes perfect sense - you spend half your life working really hard to gain success, but when you're there, you put the pressure on everyone else and focus on quick wins.

 

Now, picture you're a child who lives in a marginalized neighbourhood.  Maybe your parents were born somewhere else; maybe they grew up marginalized themselves, but in either case, they've invested time and energy - time away from their kids - and have nothing to show for it.  If anything, the amount of energy they've put into trying to get ahead and the frustration they've faced in not succeeding has bled into home life, which isn't great.

 

This is the lesson a youth can easily take away from this - the people with resources will tell you to hustle, but the truth is it won't get you anywhere.  In fact, this whole "you gotta come to me" approach to success is pretty much an excuse for those with power to stick to their low-hanging fruit and not share their millions.

 

What happens when you feel the people who are supposed to be the movers and shakers in town are making excuses to exclude you and our peers?  How much effort are you willing to put into getting an education, working crap jobs if you can find them, if you are never going to get where they are because society's designed to keep you marginalized?

 

Leadership is solving problems.  The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.  They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care.  Either case is a failure of leadership.

 

This is worth pausing on. 

 

Our society is anti-leadership, from the top down.  We have governments cutting programs, cutting taxes and cutting cheques on things like child care and mental health supports for veterans rather than making long-term investments.  We have bosses that are increasingly pressuring employees to be functionaries, content-producers, client-managers and business developers, yet training is not being provided and salaries aren't matching up. 

 

Even in our education system, teachers are being told it's their job to be educator, mediator, psychologist and content-creator to massive classrooms that include children with learning challenges.  Parents are being told to do more, but do they have the resources, time, or cognitive/emotional bandwidth?  Are they too absorbed with work, or too depressed and frustrated from a lack of work to give their kids what they need?

 

We can look to previous generations and say "they did it, so quit making excuses" - but without asking if it was a good process for them, or how the changing nature of work (who really has a 9 to 5 job anymore?), the rise of mobile comms devices and the soul-sucking challenges of gridlock play a role.

 

There is next to no leadership out there right now.  The people with power and responsibility don't want to be leaders - they don't care about their people's problems.  Sometimes they don't even care about their organizational programs, because they plan to be gone before they blow up (low-hanging fruit, remember)?

 

Or, they don't feel empowered themselves.  This can be justified in many ways (blame being a common one) but the basic fact is that they aren't, in their current condition, up to the challenge of leadership.

 

Some of them actually believe throwing the kids in the deep end is a good strategy, because that's how you identify the strong swimmers.  What happens to everyone else is one of those "not my problem" things.

 

Yet we desperately need leadership right now. 

 

We're hearing the same things from every echelon of society; government is broken.  Infrastructure is screwed.  Organizations are a mess.  Yet those within those institutions will step up to the mic and tell us "everything's fine, we have a bold plan, just trust us and don't mind the man behind the curtain."

 

Back-of-napkin plans are being sold for their commercial value, not because they make sound structural sense.  Marginalized voices are being drowned out with top-down messaging.  Rabble rousers are being silenced through defunding, firing or even eviction.

 

Is it any wonder that youth are taking their cues from the world around them and realizing that if they want to be safe, if they want to have power, they have to be willing to take it through whatever means are available?

 

A kid not investing in schoolwork, being a bully and carrying a weapon aren't defying social rules of engagement - they're picking up on the socio-cultural cues around them responding in kind.

 

This is it; this is where laissez-faire capitalism meets behavioural economics.  In a game of competitive escalation and a reduction in personal investment, it's who's got the biggest stick who wins power and privilege.

 

And as of right now, there is no way, no one who can do anything to stop this trend. 

 

Why?  It's the culture, stupid. 

 

We have a silo-based culture, full stop.  Even those who talk about disrupting silos are really just trying to stuff more stuff into their silos.  Funding is there, but getting it is so competitive that an increasing amount of investment is going into competition, not solutions.  Lost opportunities, duplication, gaps and overlaps are resulting.  There are communities in this city that are glutted with programs and players, and yet the structural issues remain.  Why aren't we learning from this?

 

I question whether the people leading the charge right now are prepared to wrap their heads around the enormity of the challenge.  Even if they do care, the reality they grew up in and are living now is fundamentally different than the one being faced by marginalized youth today.

 

The best champions of any problem are those with lived experience.

 

Which comes to the crux of the matter, the core component of culture change, the disruption that is most difficult but most necessary.

 

The way forward isn't for more downtown adults to impose solutions on youth; if those youth aren't themselves leading the way forward, whatever gets built isn't going to work.

 

This requires a fundamental shift in the way we look at society, at ourselves, and at the role of power.

 

We always look for the best-in-show to invest in; they're most likely to provide the best ROI.  We then take them from wherever they are and put them in environments considered to be good for growth.

 

All of this is backwards.

 

We have to start focusing on those least likely to succeed with minimal effort and put them in the driver's seat.  That means going to their communities, learning to speak their language, taking them serious and treating them seriously.

 

We have to create the best environments where these youth are - in other words, don't bring youth to MaRS, bring MaRS to the youth.  That means more investment of time and interest - which, but its nature, requires motivation to want to make things better, not for a quick ROI, but because it needs done.

 

Which comes to the last, most challenging, most fundamentally important component of our needed culture change.  Right now, we see power as a form of wealth to be accumulated; power is something we want because, when we have it, we can get more through giving less.

 

That stops right now.

 

From this point forward, power isn't something to be obtained; it's blood to be circulated.  The same goes for money.

 

Here is John Tory's challenge - he needs to be the anti-Doug Ford.  He needs to step away from the practices that have brought him success in life, because it's not about him right now.

 

After years of seeking high office of some kind, of being the guy at the top, now is the moment for John Tory to show true leadership by stepping back and becoming a conduit rather than a capstone.

 

The same holds true for every person of influence in this city; councilors, Executive Directors, CEOs and talking heads.  We need to be empowering leaders, not giving orders.  We have to be cultivating solutions from the grassroots rather than imposing infrastructure on top of.

 

This is not a lofty vision, nice words on a page.  It's a fundamental necessity. 

 

Our society is crumbling and the solutions we're coming up with aren't good enough.  We are failing the next generation, and they know it.

 

If we aren't prepared to empower youth to lead, there will come a day not too far from now when they will simply take what they want by force.  That is, after all, the lesson we're teaching them.

 

The choice is ours.  The consequences will be ours.

 

Either way, it will be youth that lead.

Dean's Chuckle of the Day

In the letter to Paulson, Del Mastro blames Marc Mayrand, Canada's chief electoral officer, who he said "is duty bound by statute to protect against this type of behaviour and as such by at best ignoring this serious misconduct or at worst being party to it has committed a serious breach of his statutory duties."

This, coming from Dean Del Mastro.

He must therefore be really pissed at the Conservative Party of Canada who, despite being government, has misrepresented how government is formed, permitted blatantly false robocalls, attempted to bribe a dying man, bullied public servants, attempted to bury evidence that disagrees with their positions, so on and so forth.

Duty bound.  Serious breach of duties.  It'd be a total side-splitter, if it weren't our democracy at stake.

Ownership: Kathleen Wynne is a Leader with Balls

Here's Kathleen Wynne, using her own voice in an ad to take on the NDP.  While Leaders do this all the time when they know most people aren't paying attention - in Question Period, for instance, or during fundraiser speeches - how often is it we have a critical ad voiced by a Party's leader?

Not often.  Too often, our leaders want to steer clear of attaching their name to anything that takes a direct, repeatable poke at opposition.  

It's a known fact that people find attack ads distasteful, but that they are effective in negatively branding an opponent.  So, we get over-the-top ads like a mockery of Jean Chretien's facial paralysis, puffins pooping on Stephane Dion and Justin Trudeau "in over his head."

It's pretty inflamatory stuff.  Could you imagine any of these ads being made if they had to be voiced by the actual leader?  Nope.  Attack ads work in undermining opponents, but we find them distasteful coming from our statesmen and women.  

Which is why leaders steer clear.  Which is also why attack ads so frequently scrape the bottom of the barrel.

In her ad, Wynne sticks to the facts.  Of course, there's cherry-picking here - Horwath arguably didn't vote against the budget, she voted against the continuance of the Party - but that's as much a problem of voters demanding sound-bite simplicity as it is partisans spinning their message.

What Wynne doesn't do is imply Horwath is weak, dumb, ignorant, etc.  It's not about Horwath, it's about Horwath's positions.

I think that's fair.  The point of a campaign is to kick the tires on policies and capacities for implementation, plus hints at consequences.  Wynne is simply articulating her perspective on where a Horwath government would take Ontario.

It's absolutely true that Ontarians are looking for a change.  Asked by Ipsos Reid if it was 'time for another party to take over' 72% of Ontarians asked yes.  Not asked by Ipsos Reid, so far as I know, was any question about dissatisfaction with the way our system represents individual voices and concerns, period.  

Personally, I think Ontarians are ready for more than just a different coat of paint on an old system.  I think the change we long for is more structural in nature.

By taking some ownership over her message (and as a result, moving away from the angry sound-bite rhetoric people get so worked up about) Wynne is demonstrating a different kind of leadership than we're used to.

She's being open, directly, transparently about what she thinks.

In a cynical, go-for-the-throat political war zone run by back-room operators who love to attack people from a distance, that takes balls.

Will this approach be enough to make a dent over the short span of an election?  Maybe yes, maybe no.

Either way, though, this is the kind of leadership Ontarians want from all levels of government.

It won't happen all on its own, though.  If we want to empower our leaders to own their voices, as Wynne is doing, then it's time we start speaking up as well.

Get organized, get informed, get engaged - because when you do, you can make a difference.

How Stephen Harper is Making Canada Sick

The strength and quality of Canada's governance is diminishing under Stephen Harper's iron-fisted rule.

Any challengers to his agenda are ignored, attacked or, where possible, fired.

Evidence that demonstrates there may be a problem with the way he governs is dismissed, buried or where possible, starved out of existence.

This presents a tough challenge for bureaucrats whose job isn't to serve Harper's partisan ideology, but the well-being of Canada.  When they have facts that prove Harper's policies are detrimental to our national interests, it's their job to raise concerns with the government.  

When that government, in turn, bullies the civil service into doing as they're told, the combination of stresses (doing what you know to be wrong, micro-managed to death by ideologues with no respect for the facts) takes a toll on individual health.  And through aggregate, collective health.

Which is why Canada's bureaucracy is growing sick, too.  They're not alone, though - tough-minded, top-down managers are fostering the same kind of illness across the board.  

There's consequence to this laissez-faire approach.

Here's the thing, though; when you have an individual who refuses to listen to advice, makes decisions they should know to be unsound and gets mad at those who challenge their destructive behaviour - behaviour like Stephen Harper's - well, there's a precedent for that, too.

Not long ago, people had trouble following me when I connected labour reform to mental health.  Now that it's a legitimate thing, they're not seeing how occupational mental health connect to Open Government.

Give it time, folks - you will.

UPDATE: Need any further proof that our PM is functionally fixed and likely addicted to power - to the detriment of us all?  Voila.  What's needed at this stage of the game is an intervention.

Functionally Fixed Antagonism is not Leadership

Two news stories that stuck out for me today:

1:  Tory Leader Tim Hudak says he won't back down after being slapped with a libel notice from Premier Kathleen Wynne over accusations she was behind an alleged plan to destroy documents in the gas plants scandal.

Hudak did back down (at least for the camera) on his Right To Work push but by and large, he's got a track-record of obstinence.  It's his way or the highway; there's no middle ground.

2: The councillor said security guards spoke to him and asked him to tell the mayor there was a private function occuring in the lounge, in an effort to stop him from repeating the allegation.

I did, but he was adamant that, 'No, that's not the reason'... He's very opinionated and you're not going to convince him otherwise."

Rob Ford doesn't back down, period.  He doesn't waver, no matter the evidence that negates his positions or demonstrates the harmful nature of his actions.  He is, after all, Rob Ford.

There is something to be said for an unyielding commitment to a vision or set of principles; the road forward can be fraught with hardships and temptations.  But neither of these gentlemen have a vision, not is there anything in particular that they stand for.

Both men are vocal about what they stand against - government, social service, consultation, anyone they deem as opponents, anyone who thinks differently than they do, anyone who calls them to task for their own mistakes.

They are equally quick to attack and demand others take ownership of errors, but both are hesitant to personally take ownership of anything other than wins.

Hudak, by his own words, has never lost an election - some other organization has always interfered and taken victory from him.  Ford didn't lose his mayoral powers because of his erratic, illegal, disruptive behaviour - it was taken from him by greedy leftists.  It's almost like they're begging for power enough to silence these competitors permanently.

There is clearly an appetite for this sort of reactionary behaviour; on every single campaign I have door-knocked on, I have heard tales of resentment from parents who feel their kids can't get jobs because immigrants have preferential treatment, disgruntled taxpayers who don't think they should be subsidizing social services for people with disabilities and voters mad at private corporations for hoarding capital and yet bemoaning taxation.

Bitter and disfranchised voters aren't looking for structural solutions - they are looking to see someone else face some form of punishment.  This is the resentment that the Fords and Hudaks tap into, pouring gas on social unrest and promising to crack down on those a given voter block dislikes.

It's cheap, populist politics, but more than that - it's what Tim Hudak and Rob Ford believe themselves.  

They are the embodiment of how they think the world should work - attack, deflect, claim all wins, blame others for all faults and failures.  In this model, victory is achieved by being the last man standing - which is hardly a good model for leading a city or a province.

   

The grand irony in this is bears repeating: both men claim to be champions of individual responsibility, but are allergic to accountability.  

This may be good practice in terms of advancing one's career - we're all greasing the squeaky wheel and all - but leadership isn't about personal advancement.  It's about leading.

Leaders study the entire terrain and understand how various paths intersect; they can't afford to put their blinders on, because they plan for long-term sustainability.

Leaders are conduits, not stumbling blocks - they actively seek out the opinions of others and constantly seek to empower people to be part of the solution in collaborative fashion.

Leaders are unafraid of taking responsibility for failures, because they understand mistakes for what they are - prototype experiences and opportunities to learn and improve.

Leaders have no interest in blame; that's regressive.  They are focused on solutions; instead of saying "you were wrong, you're a bad person" they say "what led to the result we have and what can we do to improve the outcome next time?"

Most importantly, leaders do not give in to cynicism or bitterness and certainly don't express such feelings to the people they lead.  People don't look to leaders for desperation - they can and do despair all on their own.  

They look to leaders for inspiration.

Neither Tim Hudak or Rob Ford care a whit about inspiration; they are far too busy fighting against to see where their antagonism leads.  

Which is why neither one of them will ever truly be a leader.

Ford on Kimmel: Toronto's Intervention

"I think Torontonians are feeling a bit mocked," said Councillor Jaye Robinson, who was removed from the mayor's executive committee in June after she questioned his behaviour.  "We feel like they're mocking the mayor, and then the reflection in turn is they're mocking the City of Toronto.  I don't think people feel great about it."

Really?  A majority of Torontonians elected Rob Ford as Mayor, fully aware he "wasn't perfect."  They didn't care.  They were mad at the system and in a real sense, electing Ford was a way of giving the finger to City Council.  

Since then, people have continued to be supportive of Rob Ford - there's still a chance, depending on how the campaign goes, that he could win.  I guarantee that a most of Ford Nation either didn't watch Kimmel or if they did, will agree that Ford was ambushed.

After all - we fundamentally don't care about what he does other than lower taxes and sticks it to The System, right?  He's not an elitist, he's a human being.  He validates our own selfishness and that's what matters.

"What I do in my personal life with my personal friends... it has nothing to do with you guys."

Despite everything that's happened - the crack, the lies, the broken promises, the mistreatment of his wife, his abuse of taxpayer-funded resources, the drunk-driving, video-ranting, Councillor-shoving, etc. - Rob Ford could still win a second term.

Despite the fact that his supposed triumphs have all been inflated or completely fabricated, people still tout his economic record as reason he should win a second term.  They love his subway plan, even though it makes populist sense only.

Here's what Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi had to say about it:

"I, for the life of me, cannot understand the decision on the Scarborough subway and maybe I'm missing something.  I don't understand why you'd not spend less to serve more people."

The Fordian trolls under the bridgecan attack Nenshi.  They can attack Kimmel.  They've certainly attacked other Councillors, Premier Kathleen Wynne and everyone else who makes light of their man, but there has to come a point when all Ford's most ardent supporters connect the dots between all the arguments against the Mayor and his conduct inside and outside of City Hall and realize that a picture is starting to emerge.

True, some people are gleefully mocking him, the way that he gleefully mocks his opponents.  Gleeful mocking has become a political staple in Canada.  It's also true that disaffected, disillusioned Torontonians are past the point of having any confidence in political leadership, at all.  

I continue to find it fascinating how mature leaders get sucked into his game - Wynne caving in on the ill-conceived subway plan and Blair expressing sentiment publicly which, as a leading public servant, wasn't the wisest choice.

Even now, the mayoralty campaign teams are pulling out the usual tricks, doing a weak-tea version of what Ford himself did to win; simplifying the narrative, demonizing and dehumanizing their opponents and attacking anyone who criticizes their candidate.  Whatever it takes to win, right?

How on earth is it that Torontonians have become so cynical and disaffected?  The city's not in bad shape compared to many.  There's much here to be proud of and even some international cred with events like Pride and TIFF to acclaim.  Our politicians aren't great, but far better than what Montreal's been through of late.

Ford won because he focused squarely on "the taxpayer" with populist, individualist tripe that people bought into gladly.  He says he loves Toronto (and in his mind, he probably does) but has shown no interest in really promoting the city or in acting the part of leader and setting a positive example for Torontonians and world audiences.

Torontonians didn't care - because they don't seem to care that much about Toronto, either.  Maybe it's because I'm from Eastern Ontario and not the megapoplis, but I rarely feel any sense of community in this city; it's a lot of people living in tight quarters, at best tolerating each other.  They crowd subway doors instead of letting people off.  They race lights and block intersections.  

On Twitter, they are quick to mock the Mayor or his opponents, but it's like pulling teeth to try and get people to focus on the positive (evidence: three #TorontoIs campaigns that never took off, but then I never paid for help or spent time marketing the idea - I mistakenly thought something positive might catch on organically).

How on earth has it come to pass that Torontonians are so disaffected, disengaged, negative and bitter?

We can get mad at Mayors, Councilors, the media, each other as part of what makes us upset - but if we're not willing to do anything but complain, what's the point?

Einstein famously said that "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."  It's absolutely true.

For whatever reason, Toronto has a negative, dispirited mindset that focuses on the negative and stands opposed to the very essence of community.  Rob Ford is the anti-Mayor, because he doesn't believe in community, diversity or individual responsibility.  And he remains a contender because of this.

The most poignant moment of Kimmel's interview with Ford was when he attempted an intervention: "If you're drinking enough that you can try crack in your 40s and you don't remember it, maybe that's something that you might want to think about."

It was a brutally frank line, but one that Ford needs to hear.  It doesn't seem he did.

It reminds me of what John Stewart had to say about Toronto:

"I heard that your mayor's approval ratings went up after it came out that he smoked crack.  You know what that makes you as a city, Toronto?  Enablers, eh?"

There are a lot of good, community-minded people in this city doing amazing things, often on a volunteer basis, to make our city better.  I would imagine they aren't the majority.

We who live in Toronto can continue to attack Ford, attacks his opponents and complain about the mockery being made of this city, we are the city.  If we choose to place all the responsibility for leadership on one man who we know isn't up to the job, that's not on him - it's on us.

Yes, Councilor Robinson, the world is mocking Toronto.  But we've given them no reason not to.

This is Toronto's intervention moment as much as it is Rob Ford's.  We can pay attention and clean up our own act, or we can keep on complaining and finding others to blame.

But if that's the path we choose to take, we have no place mocking Rob Ford.  He's not Toronto's problem, just a symptom of our own social malaise.

The best leaders are conduits.  If we end up with leaders who embarrass our city and fuel divisions among the people, that's not on them - it's on us.

Let's stop standing against others and putting ourselves first, Toronto.  Let's be a community for once.

Then, instead of being mocked for what we say we aren't, we can be celebrated for what we are.

Visionary Leadership: Ontario's Less-Traveled Road

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Ontario happens to be at a fork in the road, only this one is three-pronged.  Depending on who you talk to, 

- the Tories are the only man with the plan/will turn Ontario into a socio-economic Bangladesh

- the NDP have no plan and are playing crass politics/are the only Party that hasn't been in power for a while and can't be worse than the others

- the Liberals are doing a tricky balancing act between economic and social sustainability/are same-old, incoherent, wafflers

Of course the truth is never black-and-white simple.  The fact is that each Party has its core constituencies, core funders and pet causes that, taken in isolation, do not a sustainable province make. 

This is particularly true in this hyper-partisan age where Parties are so hell-bent on differentiating themselves that they will intentionally ignore good ideas from their competitors so as not to appear as weak tea.  

Each Party is supported in this endeavour by special interest groups (yes, they all have special interest groups) that aren't looking at the big picture of structural sustainability, because that's not their job - that's what government is for.

But if the Parties that aim to lead government are focused on disunity and scoring support from specific constituencies, they're not serving the public good, are they?  It's a cycle we've seen before - one side gets in, scores wins enough for their base to piss off someone else's, who are that much more motivated to kick the bums out, etc.  It's tiring, its cynical and worst of all, it's ineffective.

Worst of all - the focus on fighting over wedge issues keeps ignoring the creeping threats that should be concerning each of us - democratic disengagement, severe weather events and a diminishing sense of individual agency among individuals in an increasingly consumption-focused society, which in itself is symptomatic of our worsening and all-pervasive mental health crisis.

Don't believe me?  The data backs me up; productivity loss, healthcare costs, insurance costs, road rage, depression, medication usage, suicide, spousal abuse, people who aren't on social assistance but have given up looking for work - the list goes on.  

You could read up on the details and connect the dots between sectors, if you had access to the data and if it was presented in a user-friendly format.  Which is something governments of all political stripes are starting to pursue, globally.  

Which is what Open Data is all about.  I'm pretty sure that's something all Parties are behind.

As all three Parties (and their Members and Candidates) start fine-tuning their approach to an election likely to come in very short order, they're going to be focusing with increased intensity on what it is they think will land them a win.  Typically in politics, you do that, and punt figuring out how to make it work down the road.

I'd like to see something different.  I'd like to see all Parties take the road less traveled and dedicate at least some time during the pre- and during-campaign season talking about the things they all believe in and recognize, publicly, the need to work collaboratively and without snide partisan gamesmanship around these issues.  

Here's what my high-level list looks like:

- Occupational Mental Health (framed this way because it's work, not home, that has become the centre of our lives; this framing impacts HR practices, employment training, economic growth, labour safety, etc, etc.

- Individual Empowerment (don't give people fish, don't tell them to fish and get mad if they don't - teach the skills - this works for entrepreneurship, community engagement and preparedness for the next ice storm, flood or epidemic)

- Democratic Engagement (changes to voting?  Maybe, but even more important than this, political literacy, capacity building and fostering new partnerships and creative ways to encourage people of all walks of life to get involved)

The candidates would hate this, as they will largely look to build their individual wins by demonstrating how their Party is different than the others, who all suck.  Too bad for them.  If they want to be elected officials, that means they want to be leaders.  Leaders don't ride on the coat-tails of others, they set the example themselves.

To stand out in a crowd, candidates shouldn't be looking to their leader and explaining how they're better than the other guys - it's deeds, not words that matter.  Smart candidates can start showing how they would lead and what they would do right now by setting the example.  If you empower your community and raise your voice on their behalf now, you'll be that much more likely to do the same in office.

We're likely to end up with a minority situation anyway - Parties can focus on beating down their opponents now, continue beating down their opponents after the election and then start focusing on beating down their opponents for the next election, or they can do what they are elected by the people to do.  

We don't elect our politicians to oppose - we elect them to lead.

So I would propose that each Party Leader spend a little time off the beaten campaign path this election season and dare to tread on some common ground.  Forget the catchy sloganeering of any one group - it's not for nothing it's called The House of Commons, not The House of Partisans.

Think about one big vision that ties all Ontarians together, that all partisans can agree upon.  Then talk to them about it - talk to everyone, friend and foe alike, about what that vision means to them.

Attack your opponents on all else, if you must, but when it comes to this common ground, focus on how Parties can work together, bring different voices to the table and ensure that moving forward truly leaves no one behind.

The name doesn't matter; it can be the Open Society or Successful Society; what matters is that it sets a big enough foundation that everyone can see themselves in that future.

Lords look to secure their own holdings; it takes a leader to unite the commons behind one purpose. 

Or, in this case, it might take three.